Category: Unsystematic Theology

A few years back I published what has turned out to be one of my more popular articles: The True Meaning of Christmas Trees: The Spiritual Abuse Connection. It’s a series of reflections inspired by seeing some well-intended but irate

(Originally published in 2010 as a guest post on “The Cult Next Door.“) Legalism. It’s one of those nasty words that everybody points to as an example of religion gone wrong. Everybody knows that you shouldn’t be a legalist. Everybody

It’s now officially the time of year — i.e., Christmas — when people find my website by searching for such unlikely things as “Is Christmas Pagan?” and “The True Meaning of Christmas Trees” and “Tacky Nativity Scenes” and, of course, “Angels

In May 2010, Hillary McFarland invited me to write a guest post for her lovely website Quivering Daughters, which offered healing for victims of Spiritual Abuse within the so-called “Biblical Patriarchy” movement. Not knowing at the time that this would turn

Several popular (though controversial) preachers have taken up a refrain of social commentary I’ve heard a few too many times. They denounce what they see as a trend of “Effeminate Worship.” (Here’s a typical message. Here’s another and another.) Apparently,

In response to a popular pastor’s perplexing pronouncement that “God has given Christianity a masculine feel,” Rachel Held Evans asked Christian men to write a blog post “that celebrates the importance of women in the Church.” Here’s mine. Lately, both

Another in my series for Quivering Daughters I have felt dirty and unworthy of a clean slate with God ever since my experience, ever since that meeting with Mrs. H—, this feeling has plagued me for years…. The struggle that

(or, Beagles, the Bible, and Birthdays) Ali writes: Have you written on “birthdays?” My parents taught us the bible teaches that birthday celebrations are wrong and selfish. I remember King Herod being an example. I also was the example for